Catalogues for autumn evenings.

During autumn evenings, especially Sunday evenings when the rush of the weekend is over and the working week is just a vague idea, a fair number of old plant catalogues peeps among magazines, newspapers and special weekend editions piled by the bed. Older then ten years, they introduced me to the plant world and today, as autumn tasks call, I still turn to them for inspiration.

I found the first addresses in a French garden magazine. "Les Jardins de Cotelle" was one of my favourite and the name of a nursery and a magic garden in Normandy, North of France. An A4 format page of thick paper in green-grey hue, it had a couple of pages with glossy photographs, quick descriptions that stressed heights and exposure, and small schemes where plants with similar needs were grouped: shade, lime soil and so on. It was what a curious but inexperienced beginner needed to start. France became an important source. I received, among the others: "Fragrance" with a wrinkled, orange cover, specialized in scented shrubs and climbers, and "Ellebore", thin but crowded with bulbs and expensive hellebore. I scanned the wide world of old roses with the catalogue "Les Roses Anciennes de André Eve" while I nurtured my love for peonies with "Pivoines Riviere".

UK catalogues followed and I was ready for those more detailed and specialized. "Richard Hardy Ferns Ltd" had a pink cover and impossible names for those green, impalpable and humid fronds, "Washfield Nursery" offered alpine hardy plants and shrubs enamelled with encouraging adjectives, and "Avon Bulbs", with their autumn to spring editions, showed tempting collections with many photographs. "Costwold garden flowers" was small and sober, not many words and no photographs in the 1997 edition but I am proud to say, I could deal with it with no other support: flowers were no more strangers to me.

In my learning process, I faced trees and shrubs after bulbs and perennials. I sent many envelopes towards France and UK, and results did not disappoint. I have several editions of the French catalogue "Pépinières Gérard & Claudie Adeline", a copy of "Pépinière botanique Plantymen" with red crosses and dense notes near the names of the new wonders, and several catalogues dedicated to Mediterranean plants. "Blubell Nursery", from UK, included in its short descriptions interesting information about the provenance of the plants, "Nursery Mallet Court" dedicated 15 pages to the Acer collection, and "Glendoick Gardens Ltd", a mail order catalogue from Scotland, gave a new impulse to the search of rhododendron and azaleas while magnolias were the stars of the "Burncoose catalogue".

Italian catalogues are less numerous: visiting nurseries was easiest and more exciting even if it was really hard find all those plants and flowers I saw in the foreign magazines. Two names are tied to my beginnings: "Floricultura Coccetti Aldo & Bruno S.S." a fundamental discover when Diascia and Nepeta were unknown names in Italy and still a qualified and friendly support, and "Mini Arboretum Sas di Guido Piacenza & C." with collections of shrubs, courses and generous advices. Unfortunately, it closed its activity several years ago.

After hours of study, investigations on the spot become essentials. However, wandering in the garden in a golden, warm autumn afternoon can distract. Violet-skinned figs fat and sweet are under the attack of greedy wasps so you had better hurry up not to miss them. Close to the fig plant, bunches of American grapes are hidden under wide, green leaves, and lumpy pumpkins lie on the lawn.

Take a look to other gardens could suggest new ideas, too. Exuberant season flowers attract the gaze as I bicycle along quiet province streets: dahlia with improbable hues, stiff zinnias in bold mixtures, thin asters shaded in violet and more fashionable pink, solitary linarie in late, waving anemone, hairy cosmos, dark amaranthus, matted callistephus, and from rudbeckia to marigolds the whole band of warm and ripe yellow.

The unmistakable scent of olea fragrans reminds me of the incoming season.

Autumn gives a special energy; old plant catalogues creative power and a bold start.